You can easily un-highlight with css, without removing the actual a tags. Try this:
a:link { text-decoration:none; background-color:transparent; }
a:visited { text-decoration:none; background-color:transparent; }
a:hover { text-decoration:none; background-color:transparent; }
a:active { text-decoration:none; background-color:transparent; }
ps. Also, adding "!important" to the above might help overriding whatever other css settings.
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#important-rules